From Figaro to La boheme
Scottish Opera programme unveiled
WHATEVER you do in the world of the arts – or anything else – it’s always a good idea to start and finish with a bang. Staying true to this old adage, Scottish Opera is topping and tailing the 2016-17 season with two of the best-loved and most often performed works in the entire operatic canon.
The season opens with Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, the famous tale of ‘the madness of a day’ in which the title character overcomes all odds – mostly his master the Count’s lechery – to wed his true love Susanna, the Countess’s maid.
Although this will be a welcome restaging of Sir Thomas Allen’s enormously successful 2010 production, Scottish Opera music director Stuart Stratford was still at pains to point out: ‘This is the only revival of the season. All the rest of the operas are brand new productions.’
One of those will close the season in style – Puccini’s La boheme, surely one of the most tragically romantic runners in an overcrowded operatic field.
Created by director Renaud Doucet and designer Andre Barbe, it is inspired by the Parisian jazz age of Josephine Baker.
Indeed, Scottish Opera general director Alex Reedijk said: ‘It will present a very romantic perspective of 1930s Paris. If the audience doesn’t have a jolly good cry, then we haven’t done our job properly.’
Following Figaro is a major new production that may well be the highlight of the season, internationally renowned Scots director Sir David McVicar’s Pelleas and Melisande. The design team behind this version of Debussy’s only complete opera, Rae Smith and Paule Constable, also created the stage production of War Horse.
But it is the return of Sir David to his home city that will be most eagerly awaited. As Reedijk said: ‘He got his first opera break here. Now we have not the budget to afford him; but we do have the attention to detail and can perhaps offer him the freedom to do things that he wants to do.’
An intriguing double bill will feature a world premiere – with a twist. The twist is that it is a prequel to its rather more famous companion piece.
The 8th Door is being created by Matthew Lenton, director of Glasgow-based theatre company Vanishing Point, and Scottish Opera composer in residence Lliam Paterson.
The intriguing aspect is that it complements Hungarian composer Bela Bartok’s one act, dark fable of an opera, Bluebeard’s Castle – quite how, we can only speculate for now.
Following the success of this year’s The Devil Inside, there will be another co-production with Music Theatre Wales, the Scottish premiere of The Trial, Philip Glass’s ‘very esoteric’ take of the nightmare novel by Franz Kafka.
In a slight shift from the norm, the new season’s Sunday Series features four concert performances of early, lesser-known works by some very famous names.
Among them are L’amico Fritz by Mascagni and Debussy’s L’enfant prodigue. But most eagerly anticipated will be the Scottish premieres of La scala di seta by Rossini and Le Villi, the first work by Puccini ever seen or heard on a public stage.
Stratford could barely contain his excitement at the prospect, saying: ‘Imagine having the Scottish premiere of a Rossini opera – and Puccini’s first.’
Another project close to Stratford’s heart is Scottish Opera’s insistence on taking music to smaller venues. Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, in a new arrangement for an orchestral quintet, will visit 17 venues, from Stornoway, Ullapool and Drumnadrochit to Newton Stewart and Galashiels – and a dozen points in between.
Stratford said: ‘I will be conducting at the first six venues, at the least. If it is a national company, it should be taking the music to the whole country.’
The popular Opera Highlights, featuring four singers and a pianist, will also travel Scotland, taking the number of different venues for the season up to 38.
Scottish Opera’s 2016-17 season may be bolstered and bookended by two commercially secure blockbusters – but in between is a guaranteed treat from Sir David McVicar, some disturbingly dark visions, rarely seen insights into great masters and two nationwide tours. There must be something for almost everyone, just about
everywhere.